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Chairwoman Walters:

The rump (as in Trump) of the unDemocratic Party of Ohio acted anti-democratically in endorsing Tim Ryan for U.S. Senate with no input from the party membership.

You underscore your contradictory, hypocritical, and anti-democratic actions by not endorsing candidates among the party faithful in the Governors and State Supreme Court races, and only in the Morgan Harper vs. Tim Ryan primary contest. This accompanies your underpublicized decision to conduct joint-fund-raising with Ryan and not Harper, with no voice for the Party “faithful,” for whom you have no respect.

No reason, principles, fairness, or respect for the Party or any others stops a small unelected cabal from acting against a black, female, progressive, young candidate who is more intelligent, better informed, and more articulate than your "old boy" choice of Tim Ryan.

There are a number of things that have to be said first. They have to be said because virtually no U.S. television viewer knows or is likely ever to know them. They have to be said because if I’m going to suggest any flaws in the actions of the Russian government, I have to establish at least the possibility of doubt that I’m bought and owned by NATO or the Pentagon. Here are those things:

Ukraine has in common with Yemen, Iran, Taiwan, Korea, Syria, and every other global hotspot, a central role by the U.S. military.

The U.S. globally dominates weapons sales, base building, military alliance building, dictator-arming, coup-facilitating, and war launching.

Russia’s military costs 8% what the U.S. military does.

The U.S.-driven expansion of NATO and militarization of Eastern Europe is at the root of the crisis.

The new U.S. bases in Slovakia, tank sales to Poland, and giant weapons sales to Ukraine and throughout Eastern Europe are not incidental here.

What an adorable photo on the cover of this book! The slender, handsome boy is all of ten years old; I have socks older than that. Yet he also looks confident and serious. How would someone so young know about a vanishing country? I quickly found the answer in this delightful read by a gifted writer.

Sunday, February 20, 2pm

Like many Americans, I plan on spending Presidents’ Day weekend going to all of the incredible mattress sales happening around our fine country, while reflecting on the great men –– yes, after 245 years, all of our presidents have still been men –– who have held that sacred office. There are always the most famous favorites who come to mind –– George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln are usually ranked at the top, with Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy comfortably slotted in the honorable mentions. Throw in some of the more “controversial” presidential picks like Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton and you have some of the most influential presidents in American history. Of course, that’s not too many, especially considering there were like forty others.

Feb. 18, & 19, 2022 at 8:00PM
Feb. 20, 2022 at 2:00PM
5691 Harlem Road in Galena

Randy Benge, David Boley, Dianna Craig, Carolyn Harding, Nichole Meredith, Thom Ogilvie, Heather Schultz, & Rusty Wummel

In October 1998, a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten, and left tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His name was Matthew Shepard, and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay. Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic Theater Project made six trips to Laramie, interviewing more than 200 citizens in the aftermath of Matthew's murder. The Laramie Project is a breathtaking collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.

Due to strong language, this show is recommended for mature audiences.

Six months ago on August 3, 2021, Nina Turner walked off the stage of a crowded ballroom in Cleveland taking the hope of a progressive stronghold in Ohio with her. Although her race against Shontel Brown in the 11th Congressional district was heavily publicized, Turner lost the Democratic primary receiving 44.5percent of votes to Brown’s 50.1percent.

Although Turner recently announced she intends to run again in the 11th district, her likelihood of winning appears unlikely. The good news is, she isn’t the only Progressive taking on an incumbent Democrat in Ohio.

In August 2021 Morgan Harper announced her candidacy for the U.S Senate, vying for Rob Portman’s vacant seat alongside Congressman Tim Ryan and tech entrepreneur Traci Johnson.

Historians know well that the past is always a battleground. It never stands by itself. History as practiced, studied, and taught is inescapably part of the contest to control the present and promote alternative visions of the future. That needs no argument or documentation. (For a good recent statement, see Jake Silverman, “The 1619 Project and the Long Battle Over U.S. History.”)

Today is different. The uneven and unequal contest between fact and truth on one hand, and fiction, fabrication, and lies, on the other, is uniquely exacerbated and challenging to our historical moment.

Competing projects

Much of today’s nondebate is encapsulated in the false competition over the “origins” of the American experience—as if there were a single point of origin—supposedly between the Pulitzer Prize-winning, ground-breaking 1619 Project led by the New York Times’ (and now Howard University’s) Nicole Hannah-Jones and colleagues, and the alternative contentions of the 1620, 1776, and Texas’ own 1836 Patriotic Education projects.

Ohio legislators have a golden opportunity to finally repeal all of House Bill 6 by ending the consumer bailout of the two outdated, polluting OVEC coal plants -- one of which is in Indiana. This coal giveaway was added at the last minute to House Bill 6 and is costing Ohio consumers $287,671 every day. 

Joe Motil, former Columbus City Council candidate and longtime advocate of everyday people, stated that” I received a Columbus City Council Media Release email regarding a public meeting of the Charter Review Commission at 6:46pm yesterday evening. This release stated that the public meeting would take place today, February 15th at 10:00am. This was the first public notification of this meeting and it was going to take place in 15 hours. As the District 6 representative of the Clintonville Area Commission, I asked the city liaison at our meeting this past Wednesday if she knew when the next meeting of the Charter Review Commission would be held. She told me she did not but she would follow up with me.”